And lo! where had been bare, brown earth a half-hour before, was now a green sward enamelled all over with buttercups, violets, pink-and-white Michaelmas daisies, and pansies of every shade of gold and purple.
Sepperl stood transfixed. "Hast thou commerce with the elves?" he asked.
But Etelka did not reply. The words of Pertzal recurred to her memory, "Silence is safety," and they were like a wise hand laid on her lips. She only laughed like a silver bell, shook her head, and left on Sepperl's cheek a happy kiss!
[THE FIR CONES.]
AN IDYL OF CHRISTMAS EVE.
WELL, the old tree has gone at last," said the farmer, as he latched the heavy door and began to stamp the snow from his boots.
"What tree?" cried a girl's voice, as the whir of the busy wheel suddenly slackened. "Oh, father, not the Lovers' Tree,—the old fir? Surely thou canst not mean that?"
"No other, Hilda; the Lovers' Tree, under which thy mother and I exchanged our troth-plight more than twenty years back. Hey, dame?" And he turned with a smile to where his wife sat in the sunset light, humming a low tune to the accompaniment of her clicking needles. She smiled back in answer.